The attempt to cause at least a temporary aberration of my intellect now becomes very plain in the manuscript. Every idea is uttered in the most exciting manner. All statements and prognostications about my neighbor having proved false (he was amazed at my procedure), the invisible busybodies boiled over thus:
'He has lied! he has lied to you! and if you would preserve your reason, go and read the papers to him. He had schooled himself to show no emotion, and you showed enough to excite his worst, most hideous fears. So go, for Heaven's sake! He quailed once, and only once, before your not sufficiently steady gaze. Woe! woe! woe! Now what shall be done?' ... [Evidently trying to get up a teapot tempest.] 'Do not strive to unravel this mystery in that fiercely keen way, or this evil spirit will have to give place to a more expert deceiver. God will certainly do something soon to set these matters straight, or I shall cease to be!' [She had said annihilation was possible!] 'Your father wishes to speak to you.'
A fatherly spirit it was truly--was for driving me mad off hand, but overshot the mark.
'Son, this is awful! I can only say to you, be calm and cool, for you will need to be both to get free from this snare of Satan, so well conceived. Better go to supper now (for appearance sake): after that, pray for help. When you took away those books [after reading extracts to the neighbor], the whole crew of devils,' etc., etc.
This exciting language 'brought me up with a round turn.' I saw at once the object of the person who was talking with me. So I brought the affair to a full stop, as far as the use of my hand was concerned. I simply added, on that leaf--speaking now for myself:
'I will hear no further. This part of my discipline is finished.'
But I was forced to hear, whether I wrote or not. I had come to this wisdom too late. I fully believe that, as far as my ability to prevent the catastrophe was concerned, I was then and there a possessed person--_a slave of spirits_--as utterly bound to do the will of my magnetizers as ever a 'subject' was. Though I cannot be persuaded that all these beings, from whom unseen I had heard so much, were 'only evil continually,' no 'harmonialist' can persuade me that those who now began to play with me, as a cat plays with a mouse, were other than evil. In all imaginable ways, they strove to show me how utterly I had lost self-command and self-control. (I am esteemed obstinate by nature.)